“Certainly,” said Mildred; “they will organize and start the work; but then it is all these people for whom I shall write my suggestions who must do the rest of the work, and they alone can make it effective.
“Now, for instance, here is a plan which Ralph and I have just been working out. It is to help save the half-grown boys and girls who night after night find their chief delight in strolling arm in arm through the streets, with smoking, and vulgar jests and silly laughter.
“You know well enough what the social dangers are to underpaid, giddy-headed girls shut up all day in shop or factory and longing for freedom and companionship.
“Night after night have Ralph and I walked up and down watching them, listening to their silly giggles and cheap talk, noting their tawdry jewelry and ribbons and frowzy bangs.
“How I pity them! I should so like to make life a little better worth living for them. Who can blame them for not wanting, after a hard day’s work, to stay in their crowded, noisy homes or dreary boarding-house hall-bedrooms?
“Everywhere that we have been we have made it a practice to visit the dime museums and cheap theatres, and to study the amusements which these young people crave! Everywhere I find it the same.
“I used to know in a vague way about this night-side of things, but not until recently have I realized the awful temptations which are besetting these empty-headed girls who have no resources in themselves.
“Free lectures, or concerts, or libraries have small charm for such as they. They want to exercise, to flirt, above all to talk and laugh to their heart’s content.
“The churches do not meet more than one in a hundred of such girls and not more than one in a thousand of such young men. They have no desire to spend an evening at a prayer-meeting, they would feel out of place at a church sociable, and they are too tired and unambitious to care for any classes or study.
“They want a good time; they want ‘fun,’ and they have no idea that it can be found among members of their own sex alone. And in this their instinct is half right.